Tag: protests

Georgia GOP Proposes RICO Expansion for “Loitering” Protesters

WHEN THE STATE of Georgia indictedOpens in a new tab 61 Stop Cop City activists on racketeering charges last year, it mangled the meaning of “racketeering” beyond recognition. In the indictment, prosecutors cited typical social justice activities, such as “mutual aid,” writing “zines,” and “collectivism,” as proof of criminal conspiracy and raising money for protest signs as grounds for money laundering charges.

Just as it seemed that Georgia Republicans couldn’t push the state’s broad Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute any further, GOP state senators introducedOpens in a new tab a bill on Friday that would significantly expand the reach of the Georgia RICO law, with blatantly repressive designs.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies currently face the highest profile RICO charges in Georgia for attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s case, however, is a political outlier when it comes to the increasedOpens in a new tab deployment of RICO charges in recent years, as it takes aim at a truly powerful cohort engaged in the very paradigm of conspiracy. While this is the purported intention of RICO laws — first introduced in 1970 to target mob bosses — recent uses of Georgia’s statute have involved casting Atlanta public school teachersOpens in a new tab as organized criminals for altering test scores and claimingOpens in a new tab that the lyrics of Black rap artists can indicate potential violent gang involvement.

The newly introduced Senate Bill 359, or S.B. 359, sponsored by 10 Republican state senators, makes clear that the Georgia GOP intends to continue using RICO as a tool for sweeping criminalization and repressive prosecutions. The proposed law would include low-level misdemeanors, such as “loitering” and placing posters in unpermitted places, as crimes to which RICO charges and hefty enhanced penalties could apply. The bill also includes “political affiliation or belief” as a factor for enhanced penalties in certain circumstances.

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Trudeau’s Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional

Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to punish protesting truckers was both unreasonable and unconstitutional.

“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Richard G. Mosley in his ruling.

The decision follows an application for judicial review requested by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and various other applicants who cried foul over the use of emergency measures to quell Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters,  conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies deemed illegal by Trudeau’s government.

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Confirmed: It Appears Former FBI DC Supervisor D’Antuono Was Lying to House Investigators About the Number of FBI Operatives Embedded in Crowds on January 6

As reported earlier on Tuesday, The House Judiciary Republicans sent a letter Tuesday that includes transcribed testimony from former Assistant Director-in-Charge of the Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono.

D’Antuono testified that the FBI had numerous confidential human sources (CHS) in the Trump crowd on January 6.

In fact, they had so many FBI operatives in the crowd they had no idea how many were actually there that day!

D’Antuono had quite a record of failures and lies during his time at the FBI.

D’Antuono was the head of the FBI’s Detroit field office as the bureau was investigating an alleged kidnapping attempt against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As Just the News notes, trial testimony alleges the “plot” wasn’t just investigated but instigated by the FBI, with the jury hearing that the bureau’s informants gave drugs to those who were eventually charged in the plot before recording their conversations and sometimes outnumbered “plotters” during meetings.

The entire plot was hatched, planned, paid for, and executed by paid FBI informants.

The FBI informants pushed the violent plans to kidnap Whitmer. It was all a setup. And D’Antuono was in charge of the office where they ran the operation. He was then later promoted to the DC office before the Jan. 6 protests and riot.

In the letter released on Tuesday, D’Antuono told House investigators that he did not know how many FBI agents had infiltrated the crowd on January 6.

The letter suggested that “the FBI cannot adequately track the activities and operations of its informants, and that it lost control of its CHSs present at the Capitol on January 6,” D’Antuono wrote.

Later in the interview, he told investigators that “only a handful” of FBI informants were in the crowd that day.

For over two years now, The Gateway Pundit has been reporting on the FBI informants and feds who infiltrated the Trump crowds on January 6, 2021.

And we can report – for certain – that Assistant Director-in-Charge of the Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono is lying about the number of FBI operatives and informants in the crowd on January 6th.

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Exposing The MSM’s “Strenuous Lack Of Interest” In The Jan6 ‘Pipe-Bomb-Caper’

“The FBI must come forward with the whole truth, immediately. If they will not, then Republicans have a duty to tear the FBI down to its foundation, and ensure that no government organization is allowed to amass this kind of power ever again.”

– Charlie Kirk

Kudos to Darren J. Beattie of Revolver News and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for doing the FBI’s work for the FBI, smoking out the role of law enforcement (including the FBI) in but one module of the J6 operation that turned a peaceful mass assembly of disgruntled voters into a riot in order to color it as an “insurrection” and so destroy opposition to the falsely-elected, tyrannically corrupt, and epically deranged regime fronted by the ghost-in-the-White House, “Joe Biden.”

Mr. Massie arranged to extract previously unseen video from the Capitol Police vaults showing the exceedingly strange behavior of various law-men in the minutes after one of their number reported a pipe-bomb beside a park bench, a few steps away from their parked vehicles, outside the DNC headquarters near the US Capitol building around one o’clock in the afternoon on J6/21, just around the time that a joint session of Congress would commence the entertainment of official complaints and objections to the certification of votes in the 2020 presidential election. Of course, that proceeding was disrupted by events outside and inside the US Capitol, and those many complaints and objections were never registered.

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House Jan. 6 committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files days before GOP took majority: sources

The former House select committee on Jan. 6 deleted more than 100 encrypted files from its probe just days before Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives, Fox News Digital has learned.

The House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee is leading an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, led by Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga. The panel is investigating the security failures on that day, as well as the “actions” of the former select committee investigating the Capitol riot.

Loudermilk, last week, told Fox News Digital his investigation has entered a “new phase” with renewed support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has committed additional resources to the panel’s investigation.

Sources familiar with Loudermilk’s investigation told Fox News Digital that, per House rules, the former select committee, which was chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., was required to turn over all documents from its investigation to the new, GOP-led panel, after Republicans secured the majority of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections.

Sources told Fox News Digital that Thompson had told Loudermilk that the select committee would turn over four terabytes of archived data, but that the new committee only received approximately two terabytes of data.

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REVEALED: Person Who Discovered J6 Pipe Bomb in Washington DC Was an Undercover Capitol Police Officer

Over three years ago, on January 5, 2021, a suspect planted pipe bombs near the Washington DC RNC and DNC headquarters the night before the January 6, 2021 protests.

The culprit was caught on video but never caught by the FBI – the greatest intelligence service in the world.

The US Capitol was shut down on January 6 after the feds found the bombs near the Republican and Democrat Party headquarters.

As previously reported — A mysterious suspect planted two pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC DC Headquarters. The alleged bomb was safely detonated by a bomb squad on January 6.

The suspect planted the pipe bombs on January 5, the night before the Capitol riot.

The FBI continued to drip out new videos of the suspect who placed two pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC the night before the Capitol riot in the months following the incident.

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Poison Spiders At The Center Of The Web

You know why the judge let provocateur Ray Epps off the hook for his antics before and during the so-called J-6 “insurrection,” don’t you? Well, yes, it was partly because he was acting at the direction of blob officials, most likely the FBI, but possibly the CIA, Defense Intelligence, or some black-box fed outfit no one ever of (but somehow gets half a billion in funding every year). Ol’ Ray, pleaded to one year’s probation (no jail time), 100 hours of community service (checking books out at his local library?), and a $500 fine. Say, what. . . ? A speeding ticket on the Rockville Pike would probably cost you more.Clusterfuck Nation is a reader-supported publication. Support this blog on Patreon or here on Substack.

     You remember those videos of Ray on the DC street the day before the riot, importuning the crowd, a commanding presence with his military bearing and red hat, six inches taller than most of the other men around him, yelling, “Tomorrow we need to go into the Capitol, into the Capitol!”  At which moment the crowd groaned “no-o-o-o. . . !” and then commenced chanting, “fed. . . fed. . . fed. . . !” They had his number. His use of the word need was especially beguiling, as in, who actually “needed” that to happen?

     I’ll tell you one reason Ray didn’t get, like, twenty years, nor two years of pre-trial detention in the reeking, roach-infested DC lockup, or massive fines, like other J-6 defendants: Because he told his handlers in no uncertain terms that he would blow their cover and vivisect them publicly on the whole fed J-6 operation if they so much as made him show up in person for any proceeding — and, of course, he “attended” his sentencing by phone, in a Zoom meeting from a remote location.

      Okay, I’ll tell you the actual reason that Ray Epps got the VIP powder puff treatment: It was to give half of America a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. . . the old double-barreled middle finger. . . a thunderous fuck you, with the subtext: we can do anything we want to you and you can’t do anything about it. . . and we can rub your faces in it, too, ho ho. . . and then empty a bed pan over your head in case you’re not feeling sufficiently impotent and humiliated. And the purpose of all that is their hope to foment some act of genuine violent resistance against the blob to justify further lawless persecution of the blob’s enemies. They’re really hoping to set off a civil war to justify martial law in order to ensure a free and fair election.

     The judge in the Ray Epps case is. . . wait for it. . . the fabulous judicial utility infielder, James Boasberg, now Chief Judge of the DC Federal District Court, a big cheese. Yes, the same rascal who sat on the FISA Court during the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” shenanigans, when they fed all manner of fake documents to that court to enable the FBI to conduct warrantless surveillance on Donald Trump’s campaign, and then afterwards on his presidency.

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Fani Willis Secretly Colluded with January 6 Committee; Could Blow Up Case

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis secretly colluded with the one-sided, Democrat-run January 6 Committee to obtain tips that would help her prosecute Donald Trump — and tried to keep it out of court, and public view, using a procedural trick.

The revelation could upend the prosecution of Trump and 18 co-defendants because the evidence was concealed to keep it away from discovery requirements that would allow defense lawyers to see what was shared, and the extent of the collaboration.

Politico reported Wednesday:

Committee staff quietly met with lawyers and agents working for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in mid-April 2022, just as she prepared to convene a special grand jury investigation. In the previously unreported meeting, the Jan. 6 committee aides let the district attorney’s team review — but not keep — a limited set of evidence they had gathered.

…

The committee aided Willis’ nascent probe even as it rebuffed the Justice Department’s requests for material in the separate federal criminal probe of Trump’s election subversion. At the time, one reason the committee was more inclined to cooperate with the Fulton County team than with the federal prosecutors was that federal prosecutors might have been required to disclose the evidence in ongoing criminal cases related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

…

Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) had previously described “staff-level contacts” between his panel and Fulton County prosecutors. In early April 2022 — nearly two weeks before the panel’s staff met with Willis’ team — Thompson told reporters he wasn’t aware of how extensive those contacts were. And on Wednesday, Thompson told POLITICO that he did not know about the in-person visit that spring.

The lawyers from the January 6 Committee shared evidence with Willis when she was convening a “special purpose grand jury,” prior to the criminal grand jury. Since there were no defendants, Politico notes, there could be no defense motions for discovery.

Because the January 6 Committee later destroyed its records — ironically, given that President Donald Trump faces a separate prosecution for mishandling government documents — it may not be possible for the defense to obtain all evidence against it.

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No jail for Trump supporter who joined Capitol riot and was later targeted by Jan. 6 ‘false flag’ conspiracy theory

The Donald Trump supporter who had encouraged a raucous crowd to go to the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 and was later targeted by a right-wing conspiracy theory that he was a federal plant will not serve any time behind bars.

Ray Epps, 62, was sentenced Tuesday to one year of probation for participating in the riot at the Capitol, in which hordes of Trump supporters angry over Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win overwhelmed law enforcement and violently forced their way into the building as Congress was certifying the results, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

“Defendant sentenced to twelve (12) months Probation, a $25 Special Assessment, and Restitution totaling $500,” the docket read Tuesday following Epps’ sentencing before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee. The docket noted that Epps appeared via Zoom and was not present in the courtroom.

Boasberg did not place any travel restrictions on Epps, The Associated Press reported. The sentence reflected what Epps and his lawyer had requested, and rejected the federal government’s argument that he deserved six months of jail time.

Originally from Arizona, Epps has said that he and his wife were forced to sell their property and business and flee their home after facing threats to their safety over the so-called “false flag” theory that accuses Epps of being an agent of the federal government. They now reportedly live in a trailer in the woods.

Boasberg reportedly expressed sympathy for the man’s situation.

“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said, according to The Associated Press. “You were hounded out of your town.”

Boasberg reportedly said that he hoped the threats against Epps and his wife would subside. For his part, Epps said that he shouldn’t have believed what he saw on Fox News, including false statements that the election was stolen from Trump. Epps has blamed Fox and former host Tucker Carlson — from whom he sought an apology — and has since filed a defamation lawsuit against the network.

“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” he said, according to AP.

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Jan. 6 rioters who were passive can be convicted of disorderly conduct, court rules

Rioters who were passive during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, but can be convicted of disorderly conduct, a federal court ruled Friday.

The case focused on a rioter, Russell Alford, who received a year-long sentence for his “role” in the insurrection. He was attempting to challenge “the reasonableness of his sentence and the sufficiency of the evidence to support two of his convictions, both of which charged him with engaging in ‘disorderly or disruptive conduct.’”

“The trial evidence indicated that, during Alford’s brief time within the Capitol, he was neither violent nor destructive,” D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in a Friday filing. “Nevertheless, we affirm his convictions because a jury could rationally find that his unauthorized presence in the Capitol as part of an unruly mob contributed to the disruption of the Congress’s electoral certification and jeopardized public safety.”

The ruling came down a day before the third anniversary of the Capitol riot. Over 1,200 people have faced federal crime charges over the insurrection.

“[I]t is equally clear from caselaw that even passive, quiet and nonviolent conduct can be disorderly,” the Friday filing read.

Prosecutors are still on the hunt for a minimum of 80 suspects and whoever placed pipe bombs at the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC). The FBI has put up a $500,000 reward for the perpetrator.

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